Hi LU fans, my name is Richard Tran and I've been invited to post some of the work that I've done for LU so I hope you'll appreciate and even recognize some of the artwork. I was hired a few years into the project so my work doesn't have the same timeline quality that Mr. Stigall has but I'll attempt to make a few cohesive posts here and there.
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| Brick Fury - Richard Tran and Jim Stigall |
So lets begin with this paint over; when I first came into the project we were trying to find a place for me in the concept art pipeline.
Everyone respected Jim as an excellent draftsman so they tried me out as a kind of colorist. It was great to be able to show off my painting ability and skip the hard part of drawing (Thanks Jim).
I thought it came out pretty cool and unfortunately we didn't really get a chance to do a full out painting over every hero of Lego Universe. As I said, this was more of a test for the noobie guy on the team.
One of the areas which I felt was really great to spend a lot of my time on was artwork for Forbidden Valley. The look of the area actually started very brightly lit with brilliant white clouds and fog to help silhouette the fantastic terrain of the area. We knew we wanted the playable area to fit on top of "mountain islands" scattered in the clouds so I started by trying to figure out the look of these islands.
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| The Rocks of Forbidden Valley - Richard Tran |
As a concept artist, I was put into the position where I was doing a lot of experimentation on color and "feel" of key areas on maps. I mentioned before that we were originally imagining Forbidden Valley to be brightly lit with white fog so here's a fun look at an alternative FV:
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| First attempt at the "entrance" of forbidden valley |
I thought I was being rather clever with the trees. I was trying to color-code the areas so that pink trees would be in places where it was mostly for decoration and the orange trees would populate areas where the players would be able to get to and play around. Sort of a nice clue for areas that you wouldn't have expected to go to ("Oh wait, it has orange trees! How do I get there!?") as well as let you admire and then ignore nifty decorative areas.
Here's another key image for the area, the main attraction (in my opinion) of FV, the giant bonsai tree (can you call it a bonsai tree when its five-hundred times bigger than any other "life-sized" tree in the area?)
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| Its a very big tree |
Thanks for reading my little post or if you haven't I hope you've enjoyed the art. Here's a few more Forbidden Valley pieces that shows some more explorations of places that exist and places that could've existed. I hope to post more showcasing my artwork for other parts of the game in the future, toodlepip!
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| FV painting for fun and exploration! |
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| Mantis platform for one of the bonsai tree quests |
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| More rock explorations, trying to get some more roots in the rocks |
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| Forbidden Valley racing taking place in the upper branches of the bonsai tree |
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